They left him the hunk of leather and plastic, like a dog's chew toy. He did not feel uncomfortable, at least not yet. He spread the towel on the unyielding boards of the bench and stretched out. The light shining into the little room illuminated one edge of the bench, and Valentine recognized human teeth marks.

The human psyche has a wonderful capacity to remember pleasant things: the taste of a superlative meal, the feel of a lover's lips, a refrain of inspiring music. It hurries to dispose of the unpleasant-. Valentine was always grateful for that ability later: the three days in that little room were among the worst in his life.

The first tremors hit within an hour, and by the afternoon, his muscles screamed for action. He wanted to run until he dropped. Sweat poured off his body, his ears pounded, the tiny amount of light coming in through the window hurt his eyes. He felt disoriented. The room seemed to be a tiny cork bobbing on a sea of five-story waves. He did not vomit-he would have loved to do so, but it was one long stretch of nausea absent the relief of vomiting. His stomach alternately cramped and spasmed, leaving him twitching and listening to his own overloud heartbeat. To keep his heart from exploding out of his chest, he curled into a fetal position and locked his arms around his body, at war with his own desire to climb the walls, pound down the door, then run and run until the maddening electricity coursing through his body left him.

He bit the leather loop to keep from screaming.

The second day was better. His wooden cell seemed oddly shaded, the red browns of the room became muted and faint, the shadows more sharply defined. The room no longer swooped and plunged around him; it rocked like a cradle moved to and fro by a cooing mother.

But he wanted out.

He did push-ups until he collapsed in exhaustion, drank a little water, and passed out into electric nightmares.

The third day was a hangover to end all hangovers. His empty stomach hurt, his head ached, his hands would not stop trembling. When Duvalier's face appeared in the little window, he threw himself at the glass, clawing at the door and leaving a smear of saliva where he'd tried to bite.

Then he slept.

When she came again, he was too drained to react.

She entered cautiously, a tray holding a shallow bowl with some kind of soup in her hand. "How do you feel, cousin?"

Valentine eased himself onto the bench, feeling lightheaded. "Weak as ... as a kitten?"

It turned out that the soup meant the general consensus was that his ordeal was over. While he ate, Duvalier went to get him some clothes, leaving the door open to air out the stuffy room. Forty-eight hours ago, he would have run howling into the hills, but now he was content to just sip at the soup and wait for her to return with something presentable. The blood-and-filfh-smeared towel deserved a decent burial; all four corners were gnawed to shreds.

He finished the meal and got dressed, still trembling a litde. When he followed Duvalier into the brighter light of the little honeycomb of rooms that composed the toilet and washing facilities at the rear of the Hall, he put a hand on her shoulder. She, and everything around her, didn't look quite right. There was little color in her skin, and the wooden walls were ashen, like bleached-out driftwood.

"Just a second," he said. "Why do you look different? The light is all odd."

"I know what you mean. It's not the light-it's your eyes. A Cat with some medical training explained it to me once. It has to do with the cells in your eyes. I guess there are two kinds; he called them rods and cones. The rods are good at picking up low light levels. You've got a whole lot more rods now. Your color vision will return once your eyes get used to it; right now your brain is just not processing it right. That was his theory. You'll adapt. In any kind of light short of pitch black, you're going to have no trouble seeing from here on out."

"Did the doctor explain the drunken feeling?"

"That was even more confusing, and it's got to do with your ears. We have these little bags of liquid in our ears that help us keep our balance. Some animals, cats in particular, have a whole different set of nerve fibers attached to them. You know how a cat always lands on its feet, or at least nearly always? It's from these nerves. Their balance corrects as involuntarily as your leg moving when your knee gets tapped. Right now you're oversensitized again."

She walked into the kitchen and picked up a sack of flour.

"Stand on one leg. Raise the other one like a dog marking a tree. Higher. Okay, keep it there," she ordered.

Valentine obliged, noticing that as he raised his leg he barely moved. Normally he would wobble a bit.

"Now catch," she said, tossing the ten-pound sack of flour with a shoving motion.

He caught it a few inches from his chest, causing little puffs of flour to shoot in the air. What's more, his leg was still raised.

"Interesting," he said, returning his leg to the floor. He shifted the bag of flour in his hands, and quick as a flash hurled it back at her.

Her reflexes were no less than his. She snatched the bag out of the air, but while she was strong enough to halt the ten pounds of flour aimed like a missile at her head, the bag wasn't quite up to the task. Its weakened fibers opened, and a white bomb detonated full in her face.

"Mother-!" she screamed, emerging from the cloud in kabuki makeup and fury.

Valentine let out the first squawk of a laugh and then read her expression. Their eyes locked for a second, like a gazelle and cheetah staring at each other on the veldt. He ran for his life.

"Dead meat, Valentine!" she shrieked, after him in a flash. Valentine went to the stairs up to his little flat, and jumped. To his astonishment, he made it up to the top of the flight in a single bound. With only one foot down, he changed direction and leapt onto the next platform over, a jump he normally would have needed a sprint to cover.

He slipped on the landing and sprawled. Duvalier was on his back in a moment-she must have equaled or exceeded the speed and power of his bounds. He tried to wriggle out, but as he turned over, she pinned him with legs that felt like a steel trap. She nailed his arms down in a full pin. He found the situation arousing: Duvalier in the classical position astride him, the flour liberally coating her from the waist up adding its own strange zest to the moment. But her eyes were lit only in triumph.

"Okay, gotcha," she said. "Let's have it."

Tags: E.E. Knight Vampire Earth Fantasy
Source: readsnovelonline.net